


Sacrificial Lamb

by raspberrytart



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-12 07:06:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4469852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberrytart/pseuds/raspberrytart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has given his life to-and for- Sam time and time again. Sam has always been the center of his life. He has always loved Sam more than he should. Back to the beginning of Supernatural, where Dean picks Sam up from Stanford, and how their relationship grows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfiction in literally years. I kee getting flashes of it in my head. It's off to a rough start, but I wanted to see where it went. Hopefully you enjoy the start!

Dean’s first memory was of Sam. That made sense, since the majority of his memories were about Sam. After over two decades of being a big brother, it was as if that was all he was. The sum total of Dean was Sam. Had been from that first memory, of Mommy telling him with a laugh that his baby brother was kicking at the sound of his voice, and he put his hand on her tummy, giggling at the flutter he received back to his whispered “Hi, Sammy”. 

Dean’s best memories were of Sam. Hugging Sammy tight after walking him to his first day of school—Dad had been busy on a hunt, so Dean had to walk Sammy to his class a few minutes before he was able to make it to his own. Sometime later that year when Sammy asked his big brother why he had a Dean instead of a Mommy, and despite the tears that Dean had to hold back, the pain as he tried to explain to a five year old (even realizing then that it was something a five year old should never have to grasp), the fuzzy warmness that filled his heart when Sammy twined his skinny arms around Dean’s neck, reaching across the scratchy comforter of their motel room bed, and told Dean that he loved him. The necklace Sam gave him for his 9th birthday, wrapped in day-old newspaper and scrawled on with crayon, smiling shyly up at them as the two picked at leftovers for dinner on a night their dad was out, again forgetting the date that only Sam ever found importance in. All the times the two of them curled up in the back of the Impala, tucked under a ratty, threadbare blanket as some 80s hairband played in the background, Sam curled up under his arm and snoring lightly in his ear, neon lights flashing by as they high-tailed it out of some midwest Podunk town or another, the Impala’s tires squealing as they headed off to yet another town. That was the soundtrack to his childhood. 

Dean’s worst memories were of Sam. Sam screaming “I hate you!” and sobbing, throwing himself on the worn out mattress of yet another hole-in-the wall motel at the age of six when Dean told him that they had to pack, that they would be leaving, that Sam would be changing kindergartens for the third time that school year, before Christmas break had even set in. Sam running off at 14 in Prescott, Dean’s terror when he discovered his little brother missing, all the worst possible scenarios running though his head, the guilt and fear more painful, more real, than the beating from Dad’s belt. The day Sam left for college, showing them the acceptance letter that he had kept hidden, the shouting between Dad and Sam and Dean’s desperate wish that he could just lay his head down, put his hands over his ears, and forget none of it was real. It was as painful as a knife to the heart, Sammy screaming that he couldn’t wait to get away from them before he jumped into a car of a friend and drove off, out of Dean’s life. 

It wasn’t surprising to Dean, when his life was so intrinsically wrapped in with his brother’s, that he would love him more than most siblings would. That Sam would mean more to him than everyone else’s little brothers meant to them. Of course they were closer; Sam had been the center of his life basically since his birth, on that horrible night Daddy had shoved Sam into Dean’s hands, yelling at him to take his brother and run. From that moment on, it had always been Dean’s job to protect his brother, to watch over him. He was brother, but also best friend, protector, provider. Sam was his life. 

He didn’t realize how much until that horribly painful night when Sam jumped into the old red Civic, one duffle bag full of clothes and well-worn, dog eared books in hand, everything else forgotten, anything that would remind him of Dean left behind, unimportant. Dean watched the tail-lights fade away, and for the first time he could remember, he sobbed. He couldn’t get himself out of bed the next morning, once he woke up, glanced over and realized that Sammy wasn’t in the bed across from him. His baby brother, he remembered through the haze that clouded his brain, had left him. Didn’t want to be around him anymore. Didn’t love him anymore.

After that painful realization, Dean tried to move on with his life. And it was then that he realized that Sam was his life. The hunts were just the bits in between, as be waited to get back to Sammy. Now, he blocked out those thoughts, the memories, the painful clench in his heart, and focused solely on the jobs, tailing Dad from town to town. He threw himself completely into work, made stupid sacrifices, didn’t take enough care with his well-being, was stupid and reckless as he poured himself, al of himself, into job after job. There was no Sammy there to tell him to take it easy, to bandage him up, to tell him that he mattered. No Sammy to protect. So he made his life the Hunt. Turned it into the Capital H, like his dad always had.

Hunting had been important to Dean before. It was the family business, what he had been raised to do. What his dad had always done, and he idolized his dad. It was everything they sacrificed for, so if it wasn’t important, it made all their sacrifices pointless. It made every ended friendship, every scar Dean collected, every tear Sammy shed, absolutely pointless. And he couldn't handle making their lives meaningless like that. So he had to believe in this, believe that they were doing the right thing, saving other people, other families. That there were other Sammy’s out there that he was saving to live their own lives, so they could grow up with their mommy and daddy and big brother, never have to cry. 

Dean sacrificed everything for Sammy. So this was just one more thing.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean tried calling Sammy when he was away at Stanford. One time. It was the anniversary of their Mom’s death, the middle of the night on the east coast where he was. Dad had left him—sick of Dean’s attitude; they both always got unsettled, moody this time of year—telling him they could cover more ground, help more people, if they split up. He’d thrown Dean the keys to the Impala, chicken scratch notes on a diner napkin for a new case, and taken off in some truck he’d picked up from somewhere or another. So he had followed the hunt, ganked some monster, and managing to get scratched up pretty badly in the process. Sprained wrist, and a long gash down his thigh that he had to douse with Jack and stitch back together, taking liberal gulps from the bottle after each push of the needle. It was the first time he had ever been alone to see this day pass, and he was drunk, and in pain, and scared. Scared for himself, after his first real solo case and getting so hurt, scared for his dad going on alone, scared for Sammy on the other side of the country, not talking to him, moving on without him. The tears were welling up in his eyes, and he tried to appease himself with the alcohol, but his throat was already burning from the emotion he was trying to hold back, and the Jack just reminded him of the first time he and Sammy got drunk together when Sammy was 14, and he just started sobbing and couldn’t stop. At that point everything got fuzzy, between the alcohol and the pain in his leg and the pain in his heart.

He picked up the phone, and pressed and held the number one down until the speed dial activated. Sam had always been number one he thought to himself with a drunken laugh. He could almost see his brother now, in some dorm room in Palo Alto, sitting on his Target comforter in his too-short bed, glancing away from his text book, his concentration breaking and the little frown lines between his eyes that he always got when he focused too hard clearing, picking up his phone and pausing when he saw the name. Maybe he would smile, that small boyish grin he would always give Dean, and Dean’s heart clenched at the thought of that smile. Maybe his eyes would light up in excitement, and he would brush that too long, too soft hair out of his eyes. He would pull the phone to the ear pause and swallow nervously, Adam’s apple bobbing, and Dean could almost trace the movement of his throat that he had always followed probably closer than necessary. 

But the voice that answered wasn’t Sammy’s. It was some perky blonde probably, Dean could tell just from the sound of her voice. “Hello? Helloooo?”

He paused for a moment, almost in disbelief, the pain that had clenched his heart so tight for the last few months, ever since Sammy left, stuttering and dying, his heart going with it until he was just numb, and then just hung up. 

 

Sam was 19 when he first walked onto Stanford campus, truly on his own for the first time in his life. His stomach flittered with butterflies as he once again lost his focus on moving on and panicked about being away from his big brother. Dean was his safety blanket, he reminded himself. He didn’t need him. He was sick of the life he was brought up in, he needed an out, and this was the perfect one. Gift-wrapped in a full ride scholarship and everything. This was the first day of his life. And he couldn’t wait. He kept assuring himself of his own joy, tried to move on from the image of green eyes swimming in pain, a mouth clenched together, jaw tight, lined with hurt. Disappointment. He had always hated to face Dean’s disappointment. All he had wanted, from his first memory, was to make Dean proud. He had loved Dean from his first breath, he was sure. As he got older though that love became more painful. He was the center of Dean’s universe. And he enjoyed being that center, maybe just a bit too much. He hated it when Dean started leaving him for hunting with his dad, leaving Sam beside to glare at his school books and dream of just escaping. He tried to talk Dean sometimes into taking him and running, but Dean had always idolized his dad and idealized their lives. And he started to doubt Dean’s love for him. Clearly Dean didn’t care what he wanted. Did not want what was best for him. Did not love him, as Sam loved Dean. His resentment started to fester, even after they started dragging him along for the hunting. Maybe even worse, because he was 12 years old and being treated like an adult. His dad had always treated him—on and off, when he wasn’t screaming at him for being a baby or beating his bare ass with his belt—like an adult, but now he was no longer Dean’s, as he always had been before. He had been Dean’s baby for as long as he could remember, but now Dean wouldn’t let him share a bed with him, or cuddle up to him as they ditched town in the middle of the night, or hug him after dad screamed, or pet his hair as he fell asleep. And that was more painful than anything. His heart hurt with how much he loved his big brother, but Dean kept pulling away. Taking Dad’s side. Leaving Sam behind, mentally if not physically. 

And then when he was 17, warmth pooled in his stomach and blood drained a little lower as he watched Dean smile and shoot flirty eyes at some waitress, and as sense abandoned him jealousy swelled in his heart. It took him a while to realize what he was feeling, what it meant. And then it just cemented his need to escape. He couldn’t stay here, he couldn’t live like this anymore. It took him two years to manage it, two years of pining and pain, interspersed with drinking and more teenage angst than he was willing to admit to. But then his acceptance to Stanford came. He had used Bobby as his address for everything, knowing that they were never in one place for more than a week or two and that Bobby wouldn’t tattle. Everything was all set up before he could even fathom telling them. His dad he knew would yell, but he couldn’t help but hope that maybe, just maybe, Dean would be proud. Proud of him. He hated not being able to share his excitement, his fear, with his big brother as he prepared for the move, setting up his dorm and applying for financial aid to help with living expenses, finding an on-campus job to help keep him fed, to help him forget his brother’s face. He knew that would be too much to hope for. 

The nervousness in the pit of his stomach had him waiting until the last second possible to tell them, to come clean. His bag was packed even before be could face it, going out into the living room of their small motel apartment where his dad and Dean sat at the small, two person table each drinking a Miller as they talked over the last case. Dean noticed his awkward shuffle first. Dean always seemed to know where Sam was, his eyes swinging to him involuntarily when he stepped into a room, finding him immediately, and tracking him, checking up on him, even when he was keeping up a separate conversation. Regardless of who it was with. His gaze burned, and pierced, and Sam was always afraid he saw too much.   
This time, maybe it was better he saw too much. He seemed to know right away what was happening. A small flash of fear crossed his face, so quick Sam wasn’t sure if he had seen it to begin with or if it was just pathetic, wishful thinking, and he looked away quickly and dropped his bag on the floor. 

“Sam. Sammy. What are you doing?” His brother’s voice was tight, controlled, emotionless, but almost as if he was afraid of what he might say if he let the emotion through. 

Sam felt a pang of hope before he tamped it down. No. I am doing this. I don’t need him. I’m moving on.

The shouting and screaming and door slamming stole his focus from all else, followed by the squealing of tires as he pealed through the night, and as he glanced back in the mirror, the dull thought crossing his mind that he had never hugged Dean goodbye, he saw his brother collapse to his knees, bathed in the flickering lights of the neon motel sign, his face flushed a bright red, face twisted in pain, and sobbed. 

Sam’s best memories were always those moments he wasn’t a Winchester, wasn’t in the family business and feeling the burden of the world on his shoulders. The first year he went to a real Thanksgiving that wasn’t frozen meals Dean had scrounged up when Dad had once again forgotten the date or KFC Dad had remembered to pick up before he passed out drunk on the couch. The time he ran away and hid himself in a cabin, pretended his life didn’t exist for a few days as he enjoyed playing in the forest with Bones and just being, not worried about demons or vamps or whatever else the hunt this week was. 

But even in those times, in the back of his mind, he missed Dean. 

That’s how Stanford was, too. He went to classes. He loved learning, loved even the mediocre freshman classes filled with 200 people and a professor droning on in the front, only half the students even giving half their attention. It was a sense of normalcy, and he loved just having to go through the motions, not look over his shoulder constantly. He loved being able to do something for himself. But he still found himself daydreaming of green eyes and a crooked smirk. He started trying harder. Throwing himself into school, spending more time than he really needed studying, just to keep himself focused on anything else. Then when that wasn’t enough started going out drinking with his roommate—never whiskey, hitting up bars off of campus, toning down his dart skills and avoiding pool at all costs, afraid of memories of Dean surfacing. 

Fucking random hook ups from bars only got him so far, as when he was drunk—even sober, really, but particularly drunk—his mind could manage to change anyone into his brother, no matter how long the black hair or how brown the eyes, he constantly saw dirty blonde spikes and too green orbs staring up at him, a plush pink lip grasped between surprisingly straight teeth. Dating was even worse, having someone in his space like that who wasn’t Dean seemed unnatural.   
When his friends introduced him to Jessica, he forced himself to push through it. It was Dean’s birthday, and he was so wasted that he could barely walk. He didn’t pay any attention to her name when they introduced her to him. He was so drunk he didn’t really care, just wanted to grasp onto anything that might make him forget. When he brought her back to her dorm and put her mouth on his cock, he rolled his eyes back in his head so he didn’t see someone else kneeling in front of him. It didn’t help him from wishing for another pair of lips. But she thought he was in Heaven, enraptured by her, and he grit his teeth to avoid screaming his brother’s name as he came. 

The next day when she asked him –insisted he take her—to dinner, he was overjoyed at the organic restaurant she insisted on, because it was a place he could never picture Dean in. So besides the brief, snarky comment about rabbit food, he was able to ignore any thoughts of his brother. His relationship with Jessica progressed fast, not because he was in love with her, but because he wanted to be in love with anyone who was not his brother, who sparked minimal memories of Dean, and she was the first one to fit the bill. He was able to forget himself when he was with her. After a while, she stopped asking questions about him, and he was able to move past the hunting, his family, he didn’t have to be a Winchester, or baby Sammy. He could just be Sam. So as graduation loomed and the threat of real life lingered, he pondered grad schools so he could continue to live in this dream state and started to shop for engagement rings, because he desperately wanted to lock in this normal life he had, if not necessarily the girl he would be tying himself to. Yet every ring shop he stepped into, every ring he glanced at, he could only think of Dean’s hands.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean was 25 minutes outside of Dallas, just finishing up a job in New Orleans when he got the voicemail. He’d been in a diner, polishing off a slice of pie, and had forgotten his phone in the car. His dad didn’t say “we’re all in danger” lightly. Dean knew that if his dad was leaving him voicemails, it meant serious business. The all in that sentence is what confuses Dean the most. There’s no longer an all. There’s him, and there’s Dad on the time they hunt together.  
There hasn’t been an “all” since Sam left.  
And that’s when it hit him.  
Sam.  
Maybe whatever it is, it was also a threat to Sam.  
Despite managing to keep Sam off of his brain for the last three years of his life, he went immediately into panic mode. It was his natural state of being. For twenty plus years, his life had completely revolved around his brother. His only purpose had been to keep his brother safe. The last three years Sam has been away has been unnatural, and he has learned to accept it—forced himself to accept it. Because there was no other option. But this, a possible threat to Sam, he can’t handle.  
He’s been worried about Dad enough, after three weeks without contact. They barely went a day typically now, that Sam was gone and Dean was on the road, without getting a message of some sort from him, checking in to verify that he’s alive, tell him where his next case was going to be. To go three weeks, it had seemed like a lifetime of worry. But he had tried to ignore it, he had his own case to work. Tried to get over the fear, remind himself of the poltergeist in Amherst, and all the other times he had disappeared for days at a time. But this one he still couldn’t get past.  
He had to find Dad. And more importantly, he had to keep Sam safe. No matter his need to forget Sam, to move on like Sam had, his duty to his brother had always come first. He might’ve tried to black out his love for him, but his duty would exist forever.  
He gunned it toward Palo Alto. 

 

He hadn’t been in the same state as Sam in two years. Has avoided most of the west coast, as a matter of fact, afraid that he would get a craving and drive straight through, hunt down Sam. Beg him to come home. So he has shoved it to the back of his mind. His one slip, the last case he and dad worked in California, was almost two years back, when Sam was in his sophomore. He had slipped on his resolution to separate himself from Sam, distance himself. Because that was what Sam wanted, and Dean always gave Sam what he wanted. He had hardened his heart to him. The case had been in Palo Alto. Dad hadn’t told him until they were nearing California, trapped in Dad’s shitty car, where they were going. When Dean found out, he was pissed. Wouldn’t speak to Dad for two days, despite the case. When the case was done with, the witch salted and burned, and Dad refused to leave til morning against Dean’s protest, Dean slammed the door to their motel room and walked down the street to the nearest bar, too pissed to want to borrow Dad’s keys for the car (and knowing the answer would probably be no, regardless). He slouched over the marred wooden bar top as he attempted to drown his memories in the sharp taste of whiskey when his eyes raised on their own volition.  
He always did know when Sam was in the vicinity.  
Apparently over a year passing hadn’t changed that.  
He was just as painfully beautiful and horribly dorky as Dean remembered, down to the too-long hair that constantly looked like he needed a cut and the goofy green jacket, too tall and gangly, and laughing at the friends next to him as he bent awkwardly down through the door.  
Sam seemed to feel the gaze, because his head jerked up immediately. The smile froze on his face and then all color disappeared, and he immediately grabbed the arm of the douchy looking guy to his right and pulled him back outside.  
Suddenly Dean had lost even a taste for alcohol.  
He sat there for another few minutes, trying to rebuild the shell around his heart. Trying to pretend that he wasn’t watching the door, waiting at the edge of the seat for Sam to walk back through it.  
After tossing and turning in bed that night, hours past when even the drunk college kids would be asleep, his phone gave a vibrate and the screen lit up, not loud enough to wake Dad thank God, and there was a nervous pit in the bottom of Dean’s stomach, because the only person who texted him snored in the bed next to him, and thus there was exactly one person who would send it. He hesitantly grabbed his phone, opened the text from an unknown number with one word: “sorry”.  
He didn’t respond. At dawn, after laying awake all night staring at the ceiling, he dragged Dad out of California, and never planned on returning. 

 

He ran on autopilot the whole way there. He thought he would be a mess of nerves, thought the anxiety would hit him when he crossed the Colorado River and entered California. Thought by the point he got to Palo Alto the anger would hit him, and he wouldn’t be able to face what he had started. Instead, he didn’t even notice as he passed those points, just stared blankly ahead. He got the voicemail Thursday night, and it is a 24 hour drive from where he was to Sammy. He managed to make it in 25, only stopping to sleep for three hours or so on the shoulder of the I-15 after driving for hours on end, only stopping for gas and a big gulp along the way when necessary, breaking every speed limit he came across. Luckily he avoided all law enforcement along the way, because he might not have been aware enough to stop. Even if he was aware, not willing enough. Either way, it is only after pulling into a parking spot near the university, seeing the huge building in front of him, that he realized. He was here. He was actually doing this. He would see his Sammy for the first time in two years. Talk to him for the first time in three.  
And all of a sudden, it was too much.  
Thanking whatever deity was out there-not that he believed in any of them— that the car was already stopped, he forced the car door open, leaned out and released the entire contents of his stomach onto the pavement next to him. At that point, it happened to only be stomach acid, from the look of it, and he dry heaved again at the thought. Leaning out the car door for a moment to verify that this wasn’t going to be a repeat performance, he collected himself and then took a swig from the water bottle that has been rolling on the floor next to him for God only knew how long. The water was uncomfortably warm and tasted like plastic, and the combination of that and the acrid taste of vomit made him want to hurl again, but he only spat the water back and wiped his mouth. Forced himself to move on.  
This was his duty. He could get through it.  
It was just another job.  
He had to keep telling himself that if he wanted to make it through the rest of the day.  
Finding Sam’s address was painfully easy. He stepped into the admissions office in the school after changing in a gas station into his suit, flashed his badge and made some vague reference to a crime that was committed this week—he didn’t even have to glance at a newspaper to know, at a university this size there was always something or other going on—and they were falling all over themselves to help him.  
He almost felt guilty for a moment as he realized that he was implying Sam might be involved with criminal activities, that he could be in trouble with the FBI, to people at his school. That this might reflect poorly on him.  
But then he remembered how Sam abandoned him.  
And he didn’t feel so guilty anymore.  
It was after six when he made it to Sam’s apartment, camping out across the street from the building. His place was several stories up (harder to make a quick getaway from, Dean thought with a shake of his head). He wasn’t sure when the best time to confront Sam would be, wasn’t sure if Sam is even home. He tried to assure himself that it wasn’t fear holding him back. Because Dean Winchester has never let fear hold him back from anything in his life. But then he got his first glance of Sammy in two years, still with that dorky, too long hair and the stupid, worn out green jacket, holding the hand of a skaggy looking girl in a “sexy nurse” costume, and Dean realized this would be the first time in the back of his head somewhere that he tried to focus on, so he wouldn’t have to focus on the fact that apparently his baby brother was living with some chick that he didn’t even know, and oh man did that hurt, and he didn’t know how to acknowledge why it hurt as badly as it did. And Dean ran. He started the car, not even caring at this point if Sam would even notice him, his tires squealing behind him as he hightailed it out. He didn’t even bother attempting to assure himself that he wasn’t running away. Because even though if it was the first time since his Mom died that he had ran away from anything, that was exactly what he was doing now.  
He gathered his courage over a burger and slice of pie in a random diner he found, thankful that he was able to find something other than fru-fru tofu or something. He followed it up with a few things of beer, not wanting the memories that whiskey sometimes brought. Getting Sam drunk on it at some middle of nowhere while Dad was on a hunting trip, tucking him into bed for the very last time when he was too far gone to make it himself. And that last memory, of Sam in that bar, Dean focusing on the harsh taste of whiskey as his baby brother ran away from him, ashamed.  
He couldn’t handle those reminders, not when he was about to confront his brother for the first time in over three years.  
He lingered over his beers, taking his time before finally heading back in the car to lurk some more, after he was sick of the dirty looks from his server for taking up too much time in the booth. Fuck it. He would torture himself in peace, maybe he could actually find some comfort in baby.  
But that seemed even more painful, he realized once he made his way out to the car.  
He had managed to forget, after blocking everything out for so long, that Sammy had grown up in this car right along side him.  
He realized, however, as Sammy stumbled past him, not ten feet from his window on the way back up to his apartment, not even noticing the car they had spent their entire childhood in, that clearly Sam didn’t love the Impala, didn’t consider it home.  
Clearly, he held the same regard for Dean.


	4. Chapter 4

He waited for several hours after that to approach the stairs. He painfully hoped that the chick would leave, that she didn’t really live with Sam. Clearly that wasn’t the case, as she never came out. He waited until he felt fairly confident that he wouldn’t be walking in on something he really did not want to see – not understanding the pain that came with that thought, just attempting to focus on a yick factor that seemed nonexistent.   
He crept up the stairs not long before dawn’s fingers began to steal across the sky. Picking the lock is a cakewalk, and he swung the door open with just the slightest squeak of the hinges. If Sam wasn’t completely rusty by this point, he would pick up on the noise, would hear the quiet echo of footsteps as someone tried to sneak in. If Sam wasn’t a complete moron, there would be salt on the doorway and a devil’s trap in the living room and hex bags in the corners, but Dean can already tell that none of that is the case. Sam has attempted to leave the life behind.   
Dean feared the life didn’t feel the same way about Sam.   
His curiosity got the better of him as he headed into the living room and he pauses just outside, looks through the glass door; this jumbled crazy place that doesn’t say Sam at all to him; it was too messy and discombobulated and cluttered, and Sam is detail oriented, insists on everything being folded perfectly and in line. This wasn’t him at all, Dean realized.   
And then, all of a sudden, Sam attacked him, throwing punches and kicks, and Dean doesn’t bother telling him that it was him. Because what better way to get out a bit of aggression. He pinned Sam down, forcing himself to laugh a bit, “Whoa, easy, tiger.” And Dean can’t help but feel a little resentment that it took Sam that long to realize it was him, after all they had been doing this wrestling, training for the last fifteen years almost, Dean was the one that taught Sam every move he just used, but it is only when he spoke that Sam lets out a questioning—almost pissed off—“Dean? You scared the crap out of me.”   
He got a bit of a bitter kick out of that, a resentful joy that he probably shouldn’t be feeling. “That’s caus you’re out of practice,” he rejoined, sarcastically, putting in that little bite that he knew Sam always got disgusted with when he was an angsty teen. And then suddenly Sam rolled over on top of him, switching their positions with his powerful thighs and holding him down, and he has a moment there when he couldn’t breathe, and he tried to play it off as surprise but knows its actually longing, for his brother, that he finally was able to just touch him again.   
“Get off of me.” Before he revealed something he wasn’t ready to, wasn’t ready to acknowledge even to himself yet. 

 

“Dean, what the hell are you doing here?” Sam demanded. He couldn’t stop saying his name. Couldn’t take his eyes off of him. Dean. In his apartment. His life. Dean, colliding with this world he had forged for himself.   
“I was looking for a beer.” He sounded too casual, Sam could hear the deflection and noted it for what it was. Dean was afraid, and upset, and probably angry, Sam would guess, but he was working so hard to hide it all. The knot in his throat tightened.   
He wouldn’t have broken in during the middle of the night if it wasn’t serious. Sam reminded himself of that, swallowed, and then demanded again, “What the hell are you doing here?”  
“Oh, all right. We gotta talk.”  
Well, no shit. Thanks for clearing that one up, Sam wanted to respond, but held it back. He didn’t want to drag this on longer than necessary. Didn’t want Dean to see how emotional this whole escapade was making him, because if he did then he might get the wrong idea.   
Or, even worse, the right one.   
Seeing his brother for the first time in two years, talking to him and touching him for the first time in three, made him dizzy with relief, like his whole body was humming with the rightness of it, and it was hard not to fidget.  
“Uh, the phone?” He responded instead, when he realized that he probably should make a statement back, should try to box his big brother back up like the rest of the things that he had left behind and attempt to ship him back off, away from Palo Alto and Sam.   
“If I’d have called, would you have picked up?” Dean bit back, pauses for a moment, looks like he’s trying to swallow something down, and then almost blurts it out anyway. “You couldn’t change your number fast enough, once you got here. Wanted to cut off all ties. So how exactly was I supposed to get ahold of you, huh?”   
“I texted you.” Sam realized, as soon as the words left his mouth, what a mistake that statement was, and saw that regret reflect in Dean’s eyes as they flash angrily. Reminding his big brother of the time he completely avoided him when he had the opportunity to see him for the first time in a year was probably not the best bet. And it would be impossible to explain to him exactly how hard it was for Sam to walk out, how desperately he had wanted to go running back, go careening into Dean’s arms and curl up on his shoulder like he had when they were younger and have Dean just pet his hair.   
But then he remembered the bow of his brother’s lips that he desperately wanted to kiss, the strong jaw to nip, and he had tightened his control over himself, and forced himself to walk away.   
He used it as a reminder this time as well, to wrap himself up further in a cocoon, protect himself from that desperate need he had always had for his big brother, that need that had eventually transformed into desire.   
Jess walking in just cemented the necessity to separate, divide, get him out. And the best opportunity came for him when Dean, after eyeing up his girlfriend (Sam told himself harshly that his jealousy was due to the girlfriend part, not the Dean part, that he wasn’t jealous that Dean was eyeing someone, but that Jessica was being eyed) when Dean said he needed to borrow her boyfriend (was that said with the slightest bit of jealousy? Please, please let that be the case, he prayed to himself). He moved insistently to Jess’s side, said she could be there for it. He hoped that would scare him off, make Dean back off. Prayed it would make him leave. Hoped desperately that he would stay forever. 

The rest of the encounter passed in a blur and ended with Sam agreeing to go hunt down their dad. He assured himself, as he packed his bag and gave Jess the obligatory kiss. It had nothing to do with the desperation in Dean’s voice or the weariness in his face, and especially not the loneliness in his eyes.   
He just had to keep reminding himself of that.


	5. Chapter 5

It was ridiculously stupid how much he had missed car rides with his brother. Just the two of them and the impala, Dean blasting music to the Heavens. No matter how much he ribbed his big brother for it—but seriously, cassettes?—there was something so right about rolling doen the road, Metallica at full blast, Dean singing along.  
Which explained why Sam was so miserable.  
This entire trip had been Hell.  
Sleeping a bed away from his big brother, fighting over breakfast in the morning, watching him come out of the shower at night, water droplets slowly dripping down his chest and neck to the towel drooping precariously from his waist.  
Hell.   
Then the whole thing with the woman in white. That wasn’t exactly his ideal case to get his feet in the water again. Fighting with Dean on the bridge that night, wanting to tug him close and bury into him forever, never leave his side again. Just the smell of him, metal and leather and gunpowder, musk and soap and the faintest trace of cinnamon and Dean, made his throat tighten and his eyes well with tears and made him wish that Stanford had just been a bad dream, that he’d wake up to Dean calling “Sammy” and petting his hair and rubbing his shoulder in that way he realized now meant all those ‘I love you’s he had always been so bitter about missing out on as a child.   
Then the car ride, the terror in his heart because the woman in white was after unfaithful men, and she targeted him. Said he would be unfaithful. He had never been unfaithful in deed, but God, always at heart. Even when it was pushed to the back of his mind, Dean was always there. Anytime he saw Jess’ curvaceous body, he dreamt of Dean’s masculine frame instead. Every morning when he woke up, he clenched his eyes at the thought that it wouldn’t be, would never again be, Dean’s ruffled blond head on the pillow next to him, no longer his white Hanes tee covering a muscular arm pressed against him as he awoke. Even now, if he had the chance, Constance was right—he would jump on it in a second.   
If he could have Dean, really have him, he would never look back.   
He knew that was why she tried to pull his heart from his chest. He told Dean differently, fed him some crap about she was planning something for him, that’s why he gunned it into the house. Really it was just fear that she would be able to go through with it.  
He got a flutter in his heart, in spite of the fear, when Dean didn’t even blink at his baby driven through a house. Was just concerned for Sam’s well being. Seemed almost desperate to make sure he was okay.   
His heart swelled with that obvious sign of love from his brother. He might have played disinterested in him, the last few days, even angry from time to time, but obviously he still cared.   
It was that easy swell of emotion with him, more than anything, that forced him to retreat to Stanford. Because if it was that easy to go back there again, already, after being apart for three years and only seeing him for two days, then he couldn’t imagine endless days trapped in the car next to him, the light playing on the planes of his face, the easy smile as he jammed out to his cassettes, the joy that sparked when he glanced over Sam’s way (was that just in his imagination? Or God, please was that a thing now? Let it be a thing). So despite all of his desires to tug at Dean’s hand in between them and just ride through til dawn, he put on his mask. Acted like he didn’t care.   
They both acted, there at the end.   
All it did was remind him of the last three years of make believe.   
The first few months of staring at his old phone. He had turned it off, walked into a phone store the moment he got off the bus and started over, like he was doing with everything else. He needed the separation.   
It was easier this way to pretend that Dean had tried to call.   
He was so desperate from any word from his brother that he went through old texts, reread all the “bitch”es and the “bring pie”. Sobbed drunkenly into his pillow that there were never any “I love you” or “I miss you”.   
Sam would realize later that he just never learned to read in between the lines.   
It was one of those nights, as he curled up with a bottle of jack in one hand and the burned phone in the other, that Dean had called. Sam didn’t realize what day it was, and even if he had he never would have called Dean himself. As much as he was desperate to hear his brother’s voice, he refused to call him. He needed the distance, he insisted to himself.   
He realized now, three years later, that it was just a desperate act.   
He acted like he needed to be here, in Stanford. That he didn’t need his big brother.   
And Dean acted like he didn’t care.   
They both had their own games to play. 

He turned around and trudged up the stairs two at a time. Tried to pretend that the squeal of Dean’s tires as he turned the corner at the end of the block didn’t feel like his heart wasn’t still in the passenger seat. That he felt relief as he walked back into the apartment, that place he worked so hard to build that would never be a home.   
That was what made the guilt so bad, as Jessica’s body hung around his head and fire blazed around him. That he had wanted so desperately to be in that car, driving away from her. That for the last three years, he had wanted nothing besides his big brother, and that this girl that he used as masking tape for his life was the one to pay the price. And he couldn’t help but feel a wave of relief that it wasn’t Dean.   
He might not have been in love with her, but that only increased his guilt. Because this girl, who had loved him so much, and he had been desperate to love equally, had died for him, and he was focused on how thankful he was that it wasn’t Dean.   
It made sense, that Dean was the one to pull him out again. He had been pulling Sam out of trouble, pushing him out in front of him, saving him for the entirety of his 22 years of life. Couldn’t help but see the symmetry, that Dean had saved him as these two beautiful women died for him (and clearly it was for him, the exact same way, he was the common denominator, always) and he, despite that, would never love either as much as he should have. One because he had never known her, and the other because no amount of knowing her could make her take Dean’s place in his heart. 

 

He tried to ignore his emotions, block everything out as he drove away from Sammy for what felt like the first time in his life that he was actually leaving his baby brother behind. Him leaving Sammy was something he had never really done in his life. Sam might have turned his back on him enough times, literally or figuratively ad the case might be, but Dean was never the one to make that move. He might have followed along with what Sam wanted, when he was angsty and grumpy and desperate for space, no matter how much it killed him. And he tried to assure himself this time it was no different, that Sammy had insisted on coming back, Sammy had stepped out of the car with barely a goodbye, and Dean had just put the car in drive and started rolling just so he wouldn’t have to watch his brother walk away again.   
That still didn’t alleviate the guilt as he abandoned the one thing that had ever mattered to him.  
His attempt to block out his emotions, even as he practically bubbled over him, was probably what shut down his awareness. He blamed himself for that later, about those precious seconds lost. Not that he could have done anything. Still, it took too long to realize that the sense of not right wasn’t just from Sammy abandoning him (or him abandoning Sammy, depending on how his chest wanted to take that stabbing wound). That sense filled his heart, as all Sammy related things did. The instinct was his gut. And his gut was telling him to turn around. The sense of wrongness was permeated by the static on the radio, the too quiet of the night. Only a block away, he let out a curse that Sam would have chastised him for and jerked the car around, stepping on the gas to a speed that was more than just mildly inappropriate in a residential area. He didn’t even bother killing the car, barely reached a stop before he shoved it into park (knowing later he could potentially be facing transmission problems and not even caring, because Sammy). And then, as he was tearing up the stairs three at a time his ears caught the sound of Sam’s scream, bloody and painful, and he knew his worry was justified and hates himself all the more for it.  
Pulling Sammy out of danger was all he had ever wanted to do, his entire life. His entire life had always been his baby brother. Even these three years they spent apart, torture sometimes (anytime he wasn’t drunk really) for Dean, it had still all been about protecting Sam, giving Sam what he wanted, keeping Sam safe. Killing every monster that might be a threat to his brother as he gave him the only thing he could, the only thing Sam seemed to want—separation. Peace. So as much as it killed him, Dean gave it to him. It was only that potential threat to Sam that had him tearing back to Stanford, back into Sam’s life, and he had cursed himself for the distruction he caused. Now he couldn’t help but wonder if in doing his best to save Sam, he had brought him under that thing’s radar once again.   
Either way, as much pain as Sam was in (and Dean could see his misery, his fury as he hunched against the door of the impala, not even a glare adorning his face, just emptiness), Dean couldn’t help but feel grateful that he was afforded this one last chance to protect his brother.   
He forcibly pushed his feelings, all the nameless emotions that had been welling up in his chest that was just Sammy, down. He wouldn’t fuck this up again.


End file.
